


Eating Me Alive

by 655321



Category: Re-Animator (Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, M/M, References to sex and some flirting but nothing explicit I'm so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 06:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13475760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/655321/pseuds/655321
Summary: There was no way Herbert wouldn't bend for Dan, contorting to anchor the man to him in whatever manner possible.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some references to sex and some flirting but mostly angst. I'm so sorry. Shit is too dark. Maybe someday I will write the Dan Cain/Herbert West smut we all deserve, but alas it is not this day.
> 
> Title is an Alkaline Trio song.

“He got little comfort from anything. That the walls of his hard puritanical conscience were widening out immensely was anything but a comfort. He felt cold and lost. But he had nowhere to retreat to, no shelter, so he kept coming farther out into the cold, getting farther lost.”

-Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Dispossessed”

 

********

Dan woke into complete darkness except for a dim grey square floating in his periphery. As his eyes adjusted, he could tell this was a medical door, and the dim light from a hallway. But he was alone in what was more like a cell than a hospital room. He was calm for a moment before he became truly frightened. Once the initial panic abated, he grounded himself with conscious breathing.

He was picking through his memory when he heard faint footsteps resounding, drawing closer down the hall. A shadow appeared in the small square window in the door, before it slowly opened.

As soon as the figure stepped through the door, he knew it was Herbert; even with the shadows blotting out the details. Then Herbert was grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Dan, we need to get out of here.”

Dan felt heavy. So heavy. His body was covered in bandages and sore bruises.

“Stop. Herbert,” Dan laid his hand on top of the other’s. “I'm not going anywhere,” he said, shaking his head. “I'm not well. I need to get better. I want to rest.” But he couldn't look at Herbert's face. In fact, Dan said it all with his eyes closed. Like it was just a dream.

Herbert shook him. “Dan! This is not a place for you to get better,” he whispered harshly. “I know what happens here. Trust me, it won't make you better.” Herbert searched for Dan's eyes; he held the other man's chin and held his gaze. “Dan.” He set a palm to Dan's cheek, “please.”

After a long moment, Dan swallowed and blinked resignedly. “Okay,” he whispered.

Dan imagined every step out of the hospital would be agony; he wasn't even sure Herbert could actually get them out of there. But he was slowly learning to never underestimate West. They floated out of the hospital and smoothly into a rented car.

 

########

 

Even from deep in the lab, Herbert could hear Dan's voice. The first call made Herbert's face contort in annoyed concentration. By the second time Dan called his name, he put down his instruments, cleaned himself up, and headed for the door. The call came again but this time interrupted by the thump of something falling onto the wood floor. Herbert exited the lab to see Dan, bottle of whiskey in hand, sitting partway down the stairs in an increasing fit of giggles.

“Herberrrt,” Dan slurred in a tone that Herbert was unaccustomed to hearing paired with his own name.

As he climbed the stairs to Dan, the other man embraced him around his waist, set his chin against his stomach, and gazed up at him drunkenly. Herbert lost his footing in Dan's tugging and wriggling and saved himself a fall by plopping down on the step next to the drunkard. Herbert sighed, but wouldn't refuse the attention. Their bodies were close, precariously folded on the stairs. Dan just stared at Herbert, the whiskey in his hand forgotten. Herbert gently took the bottle away from Dan, and offered his other arm.

“Come on, let's get you back upstairs,” he muttered; there was something else in him that was not exasperation, but it was too foreign to name.

Dan, eyes listing lazily, groped at Herbert's arm half-heartedly before he managed a real grip and pulled himself to his feet. He staggered enough for Herbert to wrap an arm around him and hold him upright. They shuffled into the living room and Dan fell back onto the couch. He held an arm out to Herbert, who only looked him over for an instant before handing back the liquor.

Dan took the bottle, but then, whining, said, “Nooo. Yooouuu.”

Herbert looked confused.

Dan slumped, smiled, and said, “come sit with me. Please?”

A mix of exasperation, fear, and excitement was churning in Herbert's mind and he felt his fight-or-flight response tingling through his limbs. But he sighed, and sank onto the couch just far enough away from Dan that their limbs didn't brush each other.

“What are you doing, Dan?” Herbert chided, “I thought you were asleep.”

Dan shivered, held himself. He shook his head. “Nightmares,” he said.

Herbert, oddly, wanted to wrap his arm around Dan, pull the man close, smell his hair and kiss his forehead. But he wasn't sure how to do this. It was easier to think it. Just imagine it for a moment and get back to work. He almost went right back down to the basement.

“Herbert, do you remember - the night in Peru, when you-”

Herbert would never forget. It haunted him with shame and desire; it was simultaneously a deeply embarrassing and superbly triumphant moment for him.

“When you - when you climbed in my lap in the medic’s tent -”

“I remember, Daniel.”

Of course it had been awkward. For no one but Herbert West would there have been anything sensual about the conditions of that tent. Dan was exhausted, desperate for sleep, shaking violently the way he did when he was drained and scared. Herbert put down an experiment in the usual way, and then there had been a moment of near peace; a thin silence descending over the place, soaked in blood and misery.

Herbert was aware that kissing was something people did. He couldn't have said why he chose to kiss Dan in that moment, other than that he wanted to. Dan's lips pressed back against his, and when Herbert brought a hand up to Dan's face, he began to feel the tension drain from him, and his shivering grew less severe. It seemed - natural to straddle Dan's figure then, to seat himself in Dan's lap and hold onto him until he was no longer shaking at all, but rather holding Herbert's body almost desperately. It was some primitive urge that set him to writhing in Dan's lap the longer they kissed; as the kisses grew hot and wet.

“I was...in a unique position then. I am not in the same position now. We made enormous strides in research on the battlefield. One test after another, the rate of data collection and progress with the formula was unprecedented. I was...elated, excited. Now I'm back to scrounging for whatever I can find and honestly the waiting and tedium is exhausting.”

“Maybe - we could have some fun while we wait?”

Fun? Herbert's head tilted at the prospect. Is that what it was supposed to be? Fun?

“Are you using that as a euphemism?”

Herbert's brow knit, and his eyes searched Dan's face. Dan looked haggard. Though he seemed to be getting enough sleep, his gaunt face wore the look of perpetually tired physician. Nightmares, he'd said. Herbert wasn't surprised about the nightmares, but he was by the dawning knowledge that he was beginning to care for Dan's well being. Honestly, genuinely; not just because he needed Dan's assistance for the Work. Herbert bristled at the feeling that formed in him when he thought about Dan being unwell. It disturbed him, made him curious.

And Herbert began to have the strangest urge. Dan's eyes looked so soft, feeble and flirting with sleep. Herbert pressed his lips to Dan's in a surreal moment of action before thought. Dan made a noise akin to a purr, and Herbert began to understand how this might be “fun.”

  Herbert sighed. He wanted to push Dan to initiate. The man looked so tired.

  “If it's killing time you're after, I can do that in the lab.”

  Dan looked at him, still tired but now startled. “Herbert, no,” Dan clasped Herbert's hand in his own. “Please don't leave.” Then Dan's eyes flashed and he grinned drunkenly. “Did you...want to do it in the lab?”

Herbert scoffed, and blushed. “Jesus, Dan.”

“I'm sorry,” Dan simpered, “I'm drunk.”

Herbert glanced at the whiskey bottle, rolled his eyes and picked it up. He swigged from it, deeply because he knew it would be unpleasant and he didn't intend to sip from it again; one long pull, three swallows. He made a face as he put the bottle back on the table. “Jesus,” he swore again.

Dan made a noise while his cold nose pressed to Herbert's throat. His lips brushed the collar bone under Herbert's shirt collar. The ease of Dan's movements made everything feel like a fever dream. A far cry from the hot desperation of their previous encounter.

Honestly, Herbert wanted to feel that again, but he wanted it from Dan. He wanted Dan the way he'd seen Dan with women. Like a sensual bully, pushing for what he wanted but always within his bounds; never quite brutish. Herbert didn't know how to explain it, couldn't ask for what he wanted. He only knew that Dan's aggressive charm worked just as thoroughly on him as it had on many women. Despite this, Herbert knew he had Dan in his own way. Locked up in Herbert's own charms, and that gave him an altogether different form of satisfaction.

While Herbert was preoccupied in overthinking, Dan had gotten his shirt open. He was trailing his hands over Herbert's naked chest, and with a hungry kiss Dan shattered every function in West's brain, leaving room for very little else but Dan Cain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used a scene from Bride of Re-Animator but I changed it up a bit. Y'all, I went through so much effort just looking for Dan Cain's motivation as a character. What I concluded is, he's fucked up.

“I’m moving out.”

“What?”

“I'm moving out,” Dan repeated forcefully.

“Dan, we can't turn back now!”

But Dan cut him off before Herbert could launch into another of those monologues. Where he would use a scientific sanctimoniousness, a hurt disbelief, and the pouty lips and longing eyes all together to devastating effect. Dan wouldn't let him.

“No, Herbert. I don't want to hear it. I'm moving out. I'm leaving you.”

That turned Herbert silent. Even his morbid little doodle of an experiment was halted for the moment. Dan let that disgust fuel him. _Keep it. Stay in it._ _Don’t back down. Don’t let him-_

Herbert was used to playing a game with Dan in these moments. A deft manipulation with the pout and the puppy eyes. But he did feel something different now. Something heavy between them in this moment. He scoffed at it. Here, among the wonders they could make together…. Herbert glanced to the specimen on the table. It would be so simple to make it move, to give it life and experience-

“But- Dan, we can’t-”

Herbert’s mind was on the Work. The work, why couldn’t he just-

Anger rose up in Herbert, and he felt himself begin to tremble, muscles spasming with pent energy.

Herbert could feel the growing fortitude in Dan. A gravity pulling the man away from Herbert. Even if Dan’s eyes were still as vacant as they had been for years, Herbert could discern the resoluteness in the set of the jaw, the tone of voice. Not a whine or an hysteria, but an exhausted finality. Nothing leading, in that way he'd grown used to with Dan… when Dan would agonize over a moral dilemma in the work but Herbert would soothe it. Sometimes diligently with fingers and mouth, sometimes cleverly with some rationale, sometimes underhandedly with some spectre of Meg or pantomime of humanitarianism.

There was no way he wouldn't bend for Dan, contorting to anchor the man to him in whatever manner possible.

Sometimes Dan let himself believe Herbert's machinations were friendship or love or comforting or all he deserved for the spiral of sin he had fallen into. There was a part of him that thrived on perversity, and he had let curiosity carry him for far too long. There was nothing here he needed or deserved. He saw it now.

“You’re leaving? That's it?”

“It's over, Herbert. Everything between us. It's over.”

Herbert stood completely still. He didn't look at Dan; his eyes instead wandered over the equipment spread across stainless steel tables.

Dan turned his back to Herbert, took a few steps across the room and turned back.

“I'm going out with Francesca tonight. When I get back I’m going to pack up my things.”

Herbert wanted to rage. Of course. This was because of that bitch.

“Why don't you just bring her here?” Herbert asked, faking his best amiable voice.

Dan sneered, lifting a hand to the stairway rail.

“So you can use her for parts?” he practically growled the accusation, voice betraying an overwhelmed disgust. “No, Herbert. There's no way in hell I'm letting her step foot in this house.”

 

******

The end had been nigh for some time. But only in that particular moment did Herbert truly recognize the inevitability of the end. The brutish cop was nothing. It was Dan shaking him in a way that he had never laid hands on Herbert before. He felt the end. And he knew something had to be done.   
He had constructed plans to fight the end. Plans to delay it and plans to end it his own way - if it came to that. Plans... Grisly plans, he knew. He tried not to dwell on these. But they came unbidden to him anyway. At night alone. Once his private thoughts of Dan had been euphoric. Now they had become anxious.   
  
He wanted to keep Dan. There was a deeply maddening ache when he faced the reality of losing Dan.   
He saw the inevitable end in Dan's eyes. Observed it all with the same acuteness Dan would happily benefit from in their clandestine nights in bed together. Herbert could discern the meaning in the timbre and pitch of Dan's frantic shouts now just as accurately as he could in other bygone moments the gasps and moans of Dan's pleasure. They didn't have nights like that anymore. The end was nigh.   
  
Herbert knew he could calm Dan for now.   
But how many more times?   
He would have to do something about Francesca.   
  
Herbert didn't need Dan to tell him so in order to know about himself that he was arrogant to the point of recklessness. And despite how Dan may harp, Herbert did in actuality realize the possible consequences of his research.   
He had simply decided not to care. It was a means to such a grander end. What did it truly matter? Anything was just as much clay. Anything could be shaped. Re-made.   
  
But Herbert was only now beginning to understand that such methods rendered him unlovable. He had never bothered with that nonsense before Dan. Perhaps in dark shadows of experience deemed useless there was a seeking of affection or even approval from another. But it was nothing he was interested in digging around for.   
  
How Dan made him ache. An ache to claim. An ache to coexist. An ache to belong. An ache to be anything other than he was. It was an unprecedented feeling. Herbert rarely felt anything akin to shame. But Dan shamed him and showed Herbert a prism of perceptions just with his eyes. Herbert had learned more from Dan than he would ever admit. Dan had given him so much. Herbert also knew Dan thought he didn't appreciate that. That Dan was so open. So giving. But he did. And despite having never experienced it before Herbert West knew he was in love with Dan Cain. Maybe too much. Maybe in the wrong way. Maybe obsessively or violently...but in love. And he knew Dan had been in love with him too. Maybe shamefully. Maybe the wrong way. Maybe only in shadows and maybe destructively...but in love.   
Had been. Herbert knew that too. With a sigh.   
Herbert would never have imagined the idea of being alone could be so terrifying.

  


There was a storm brewing around Dan. The insane reality he was living in was chipping away at his optimism. Every time he sunk into shadows of despair, Herbert came closer. He had seen Herbert as a known variable to cling to after Meg. And then after the war.

Nevermind that it was Herbert, always, leading him as if into a trap. Dan crawled out of each trap, broken. Was it a trap though? Did Dan recognize it? See it before - while - it was happening? Did Dan always just walk into the trap?

He shook. Trembled. Fetal position, he pulled himself closer into himself. That never stopped the shaking.

Dan was starting to think Herbert wanted him broken. Or tested? If this were a test, he was doing miserably.

 

Something about just how desperate Herbert became at the idea of losing Dan - to be blunt, it gave Dan an oft-euphoric power trip. He felt so hopeless, so hopelessly tied to Herbert through fear and reputation - that against his better judgement he almost always took whatever bait Herbert offered up any time Dan threatened to break their ties. Such a temporary fix - a flicker of power, a mighty ascension followed by a dizzying fall. Dan knew he had stayed too long. He knew the longer he stayed, the more difficult it would be to leave. Dan knew he would never be well again until he had the strength to be alone. But the idea of alone was so dreadful. It made him sick. It made him think about dying. He would rather die than be alone.

 

Even as he said the words - “I’m moving out, “I’m leaving,” “I can’t do this anymore” -all the words he’d said before. He yearned for Herbert. Even as terrified as he was of the man, Dan’s attraction to him never flagged. Dan was obsessed with Herbert West. So he was never surprised when Herbert shrugged off his threats. But Dan knew - he could feel - that someday he would have the courage. To leave it behind, finally. The obsession. He lacked the strength now. He lacked the will. Herbert’s will was so strong, and Dan had let it carry him for so long. A crippling co-dependency. And he recognized it. So now that he did - there was an end in sight. A moment of clarity. Someday it will break, this fever.


End file.
